Latest video reviews
Janet Leigh is Afraid of Jazz by Marsha de la O
The latest videopoem by Matt Mullins, who writes:
Here’s Janet Leigh; she’s afraid of jazz in reverse as an overlay to diagrammatical stereographic explanations. The knife-blade shrieks are Doppler warps to a molasses of strips teased. Unimaginable synchronicities abound. The drain eye has an arm and spins water into sound. It’s all very pointed in its touching.
poem: Marsha de la O
concept/direction/audio-visual composition: Matt Mullins
Vimeo description
Via the Filmetry Archive. The poem by Marsha de la O was one of the texts supplied to filmmakers for their 2024 contest; this film placed second. I was especially impressed by how Mullins handled the challenge of including and suggesting jazz elements in the soundtrack without simply deploying a jazz track, giving the film an allusive depth and working to counter-balance what might have otherwise seemed too cerebral an approach to the imagery. And given the long history of jazz at poetry readings, Mullins’ Beat-style vocal delivery seemed just right to my ear.
The Bride Goes Wild by Amy Gerstler
This recent film by Janet Lees, who needs no introduction here, took top honors at this year’s Filmetry festival, part of the ten-day Capital City Film Festival (CCFF) in Lansing, Michigan. Its propulsive energy and light-hearted approach, while a bit of a departure from some of the slower, more meditative work that Lees is best known for, demonstrates a mastery of textured layering, and overall makes a great fit with the poem by Amy Gerstler — one of a selection of texts provided by the organizers:
This year’s theme was POETICS OF CINEMA. Pre-selected poems all engaged the concept of cinema in some way, and filmmakers were encouraged to create new work from them. The only rule is that filmmakers must include the text of the poem in full.
CCFF website
As for the poet,
Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art criticism, journalism and other stuff. She has published thirteen books of poems, a children’s book and several collaborative artists books with visual artists. Index of Women, her most recent book of poems, was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
author website
Be sure to browse the archive at Filmetry, which has been updated to include all of this year’s films—a great resource.
Balta puķe / The white flower: Latvian folk-poetry
This winner of the 2017 Maldito Festival de Videopoesía, by Spanish artist, filmmaker and videopoet Hernán Talavera, deploys an unspecified quantity of short, anonymous folk poems to great effect.
Dainas are small lyric poems coming from the oral tradition that constitute one of the most important and ancient treasures of Latvia. In 2001, dainas were declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. “Balta puķe” (“The white flower”) is a dialogue between some of these dainas and images recorded in Latvia in the winter of 2015. This dialogue revolves around the concept of “memento mori” -remember that you have to die- that reminds us the inexorability of Death.
webpage (click through for the list of screenings)
Latvian language along with Lithuanian, are considered the most archaic Indo-European languages of those which are spoken today.
Talavera is one of the filmmakers included in Versogramas, a 2017 documentary about videopoetry, in which he said that places are the main characters in his videopoems; he sees them as “little universes.” “Solitude and emptiness are not negative concepts” for him, but provide relief from the suffering caused by our endless quest for stimulation. He added that he frequently removes sound or color from his videos in a “compromise with austerity,” pointing out that “when you close your eyes you may begin to hear better.” One can certainly see this in Balta puķe.
There’s also a version with Spanish subtitles: La flor blanca.
Hamlet’s “What a piece of work is man” soliloquy by William Shakespeare
London-based videopoet Mikey Delgado just surfaced after a three-year hiatus with this remix of war footage with a recitation from Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2, all of it uncredited in the best samizdat style, and it’s perfectly, horribly on-point. I’ve lost my mirth, too…
I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof, fretted
with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving
how express and admirable; in action how like
an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
delights not me, no, nor women neither, though by
your smiling you seem to say so.
Sea Breeze (Brise Marine) by Stéphane Mallarmé
A brilliant musical adaptation and video remix of A.S. Kline’s English translation of Mallarmé’s poem by Eric DaLuz Espada, AKA Vox Poesis (YouTube, Instagram, Bandcamp). The sped-up images of water have a propulsive force to match the music and intoned text, for an effect that’s at once meditative and unsettling—as the poet probably would’ve wanted.
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This is a beautifully crafted videopoem that really resonates with the current moment. The idea of mutual aid and democratic decision-making as the ‘country we hoped for’ is powerful, especially when framed through such evocative imagery. It’s also great that it’s released under a Public Domain license, making it easy to remix and share. If you’re working with transparent images for your own projects, you might find Image Outline Maker helpful for adding clean outlines to your visuals. Image Outline Maker
This video’s call for mutual aid and democratic decision-making feels especially urgent right now, even if the odds seem long. It’s a good reminder that we can all contribute to shifting the conversation, even in small, creative ways. For lighter creative relief, an AI sticker maker can turn a photo into a fun reaction pack to share those feelings with friends. AI Sticker Maker
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Mike Hoolboom putting that latest videopoem out under a Public Domain Dedication that lets anyone modify it is a genuinely generous move — it practices the mutual-aid politics the poem preaches. The Gibbins piece has stayed with me too: the observation that almost none of the vegetation in a Botanic Garden is native, so the original local environment has to be skilfully managed and manipulated just to keep exotic plants from all over the world alive, is a quietly devastating frame for that control-versus-admire tension. And reading your drought note right after the watery imagery made the comparison with Because We Can — the piece originally developed for the FELTspace Gallery exhibition in Adelaide — land that much harder; the feeling that refocusing on what matters could still turn the planetary malaise around, while seeing very little chance of it, is exactly the mood both films share. On the craft side: when I’m cutting something like this and need a deep pool of frames to sift, I’ve taken to using a tool that can generate hundreds of AI images in one batch, keeping only the two or three frames that actually fit the poem’s rhythm instead of scraping stock sites one frame at a time.